Total marine fisheries extractions by country in the Baltic Sea: 1950-present, Rossing, Booth and Zeller 7 FISHERIES CATCHES FROM THE BALTIC SEA LARGE MARINE ECOSYSTEM: 1950-20071

We estimated the total marine and brackish-water fisheries catches from the Baltic Sea Large Marine Ecosystem, from 1950-2007, taken by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden. Using the ICES electronic catch database as the ̳reported data‘ baseline, we added several IUU (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated) catch components: ̳adjustments‘ (data source adjustments to the reported landings), ̳unreported‘ landings (termed ̳unallocated‘ by ICES), estimates of ̳discards‘, and estimates of ̳recreational catches‘. This ̳reconstructed total catch‘ was 53.5 million tonnes from 1950-2007, which is approximately 30% higher than landings officially reported by ICES for the same period. For the period since 2000 (2000-2007) this difference was 35%. Our reconstruction is likely an underestimate, as we used minimum values based on conservative assumptions. However, a conservative estimate is still preferable to the current default assumption of ̳zero catch‘ in the absence of officially-reported IUU data. Currently, ICES does not disclose countries that do or do not submit estimates of these other fisheries sectors to ICES, and this lack of transparency prevents countries that are either not collecting or not reporting data from being held accountable by the public and other stakeholders on issues of public resource use.